While we know kpop album sales is driven by fansigns/videocalls and POBs (cards and various attachments eg plushies, lipbalms, mini mp3 players, bags) – I think in a dying album sales market (the only album market that is relatively alive at the moment is Japan, kpop and Taylor Swift), I find it interesting that kpop album sales tend to have a predictable trend.
Most kpop album sales will be concentrated on its first week of sales and most highest sales will be its 1st-2nd day sales. Most sales will taper off after the first month (not charting anymore) so it is not common to see old albums (even an album released less than 6 months prior is included in this category) charting more than 4 weeks at most.
While we have exceptions to this general ‘rule’ (BTS obviously – their years old album can still be charting for years to come) – most follow this rule. Here comes my observation coming from someone who follows SKZ closely.
SKZ in their earlier years used to sell 1-5k for their first day and 10-50k for their first week. They did not even sell 100k for their first month until Cle: Levanter and GO LIVE. But I noticed recently even their first album I Am Not is selling cumulative 400k (8 years later) and GO LIVE and IN LIFE are each almost reaching 1 million sales compared to their first month sales of 200-300k. SKZ will likely have more albums as million sellers from their 2020 releases (surprisingly) soon.
I did not follow other groups trajectory (and we know BTS and Seventeen sells millions for years) so I do wonder – is there more groups who sells their old albums beyond their first 1-2 months to reach 1 million album sales? Because in the most logical sense these old albums do not have any fansigns attached anymore (most fansigns/fancalls are concentrated in the first few weeks-months of album release) and older albums than 2022-ish do not have much freebies like bags/charms/lipbalms/mp3 players/plushies. What drives this residual album sales? Newer fans who are interested in old albums?
I know these days kpop groups – be it girl or boy groups can easily sell 400k-1 million in their first weeks, especially groups from big companies and especially SME/Hybe groups, CORTIS even sold 2-5 millions for their debut and 2nd albums and that is much more than the average kpop groups – but those days before 2022 – not many are selling 1 million albums (BTS/Seventeen/EXO are the only ones as far as I can recall) – so for old albums to sell years later to even reach 1 million sales from the initial 100k is surprising to me.
Tbh, I find kpop album sales fascinating because kpop manage to capture such dedicated fanbase to gather such support for their idols. And I still wonder how much kpop idols get from album sales – I do hope they get decent enough cut considering streams pay pittance (Korean streams pay worse but tbh, Spotiy and iTunes also do not pay decent enough to even talk about).
I also know there is portion of kpop fans who look down on album sales – but at the end of the day, album sales is one of the better predictor of tour size, not even streams can predict the size of a groups’ tour (we know what is happening to kpop tours these days in general) so even with the multiple variants, those album sales do mean something for kpop in general.
submitted by /u/Many-Ad-9007
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